


Thermodynamics of the Heart

by HockityPockity



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Hermann has a Lonely Guy Cat, Illustrations, Inadvisable Magic Surgery, M/M, Newt is a Dork, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tongue-in-cheek, technomancy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-12 23:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3359621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HockityPockity/pseuds/HockityPockity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If one's heart is painful, one should have it removed.<br/>Newt disagrees.</p><p>A fairytale inspired fantasy AU in which Hermann is not living up to tradition in heart-hiding methodology and Newt follows a dare that has unplanned consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Equal and Opposite

**Author's Note:**

> Happy International Fanworks day, apparently. This idea wouldn't leave me alone, so I'm sharing it with all of you.

Once  upon a time there was born a boy with a prickly, painful heart, a bright brain, and a gift of magic.

The world is not often kind to such a combination as these and as the boy grew, unkindness and cruelty  the only response to the expressions of a bright mind and uncommon magic, he began to think that perhaps had he received two rather than all three together, he would have been better off.

 

There's nothing easier to a bright mind enamoured of mathematics than simple subtraction,after all, and so the boy burdened with a prickly, painful, too caring heart changed himself into a prickly, painful, cold and heartless man. He withdrew from the place and people that had borne him,  taking only the cold coin of his birthright and his books in a search for solitude and seeking none but his own bright mind and magic as company.

 

\- - </3- -

 

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; for a heart that is too painful to let be touched there is a matched heart that loves too strongly, giving of itself too easily to be comfortable.

 

Not far from that painful prince’s home was born another boy, quick and clever and curious and in love with the feel of the grass under his toes, in love with the animals in the barn and the birds in the trees and the tools in his father’s workshop and the hows and the whys of every little thing that could be found in the wide world; loves all consuming and distracting and easily shunted to the side in favor of the next at one and the same time.

 

He doesn’t understand how others cannot love as he does, learned to be clever and curious is often to invite ridicule and cruelty, learned that even loving someone in the best way you know how will not make them stay, and there are days where his too strong heart weighs him down with leaden grey disappointment. Still he grew, learned, yearned for all the knowledge that couldn’t be found in the bounds of his father’s house.

 

He left to seek his fortune with a warm blessing, the pack on his back, and the pleasant burn of his first tattoo.

 

\- - </3- -

 

Newton ‘ Call-Me-Newt’ Geiszler, Adventurer, Teller-of-Tales and Jack-of-A-Lot-But-Not-Technically-All-Yet-Man-I’m-Getting-There-Though-Trades, was two large mugs of strong ale in, therefore drunk, and also therefore in no fit state to be making major decisions, when he took the dare. Certainly not in any state to make decisions based on equally drunken insults to his pride.

This had never stopped him before.

Giving into the taunts of a group of drunk locals who clearly took the tales of a scrawny, scruffy squeaking storyteller to be entertaining enough for the time being but certainly not actual events was not his finest moment.

Even hungover and bleary-eyed, it was the cat that got him caught.

“Bring something back, yeah that’s totally easy, just go and _steal something_ from the local creepy  magic _nutjob_. Why do I _do_ this to myself.”  the sotto-voce muttering wasn’t his best habit either, but it did help to keep him sane and calm and on task as he waited for the leaden steps of said local Creepy-Magic-Nutjob’s Also-Creepy-but-Kind -Of-Totally-Amazing-Metal-Golem-Knight-Things to pass his hiding place, pressed against cold stone. Those needed a better name, something more snappy, but later. It was bad enough how his fingers itched to take them apart and see how they walked and hunted on their own.

Other than ‘magic’, obviously.

A one-two-three-four-one-thousand count and the sounds echoed away down the corridor, the indoor guards matching the patterns of the ones outside and he’d yet to see a single sign of any other flesh-and-blood human besides himself. He kept himself cautious, leaning a tousled head out to squint dry-eyed down the corridor before his footsteps echoed in the same pace as the Golem guards to check the next of a long line of irritatingly locked doors.

“ Mother of little creatures, what is the _point_ of having all this _space_ if you’re not us- oh.” The door gave under the pressure of his hand, swinging  wearily open on nothing more exotic than a dim store-room, faint trails marring the settled dust between shelves. “ _Great._ Risking life and limb for potatoes. Wonder if they’re creepy-cool-magic potatoes or just the regular boring kind? Maybe I can bring back creepy-evil-potato-blight and show them, show them all!” His shoulders slumped, half-pouting to himself as he pushed the door mostly-shut behind him. No point in drawing attention to himself in the one place there’s been any sign of life.

He sighed, letting the tension of sneaking through the apparently not-completely-abandoned tower’s lower levels slip from his shoulders as well, and set to combing through the room for something, anything, that looked even vaguely other than ordinary. Even spices could at least be taken back to the innkeeper to be traded for another night under a good roof and in a warm bed. More bagged vegetables passed under his eyes and hands, apples and grain across from cedar chests of nothing more exciting than linens and bolts of fabric, even if they were of higher quality than he was used to for himself.

Still, there was something keeping him from giving up entirely and just wandering back to accept his ridicule in town, an instinct beyond his own stubbornness urging him to take another look, work a little further back. If nothing else he was enjoying the feeling of well-finished smooth woods under his fingers and the scent of spices mingling dulled in the air; though none of the spice chests seemed to have any sort of label beyond their carved decorations. Maybe the Creepy-Magic-Nutjob or whatever weird thing passed as his servants just knew, but for Newt’s purposes he defaulted to  a childhood method of making up his mind. The foreign styles of the swirls and plants and tiled inlays would have to do as proof of his errand, his fingers tripping off the tops of chests in rhythm to nonsense syllables.

“ ...Catch a mountain-troll by the- Oh, hello there!” He jolted, blinking down at the cat that had brushed across his legs just as as a static shock pricked his finger on the second to last chest in the row. He shrugged, scooping it into his bag and hunching down to greet the animal, all smiles and the clandestine nature of his presence forgotten.

“ Now where did you come from?” He held his fingers out for the cat, murmuring to it while it took his tribute and slid itself along the underside of them, doubling around to sniff at his fingers with a plaintive sound. “ Oh, you are a pretty one, sweetheart, but I don’t have anything for you. Maybe there’s some dried fish down here…”

“No. There is not.” The dry voice filtered through his ears only moments before the carved end of an ornate wooden staff made it’s home in his ribs, prodding him to his feet to meet a dark, baleful glare. The cat shifted allegiances, traitorous, curling around long legs to peer from beneath the stranger’s heavy robes.“ Who are you and how did you get past my Jaegers?”

“Oh!” Newt bounced, hands en route to a nonthreatening open-palm sort of position in the air  coming  back together in an excited clap, marking self preservation off his list of traits.  “Jaegers, that is a waaaay better name than I was calling them! They’re really cool but kind of predictable, man.“ An excitable squeak cracked the flow of his words.

“ _Predictable._ ” The word came out in a low, breathy snarl, dark eyes narrowed at Newt and the air around them heavy and crackling with unpleasant, atonal static as he leveled the staff closer to Newt’s face. Newt’s abstract of Local-Creepy-Magic-Nutjob reformed within a heartbeat into an extremely concrete Sorcerer-With-Great-Cheekbones-Is-Going-To-Kill-Me. At least his murderer was attractive.

A good way to go.

  
  
\--</3--


	2. An Object At Rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Common or Garden Newt is mouthy when cornered. Hermann is Not Amused, but waste not want not. The cat doesn't care as long as it gets fed.

His epitaph, assuming anyone ever found out to  mark a grave for him, would read “ _Here lies Newt Geiszler, exploded to death over what was probably just pepper_.”

Except.

Being vaporized over pepper was _stupid_.

He cleared his throat, cutting off whatever invective Tall-Dark-and-Sparky was ready to  follow up with, gaze landing where a long-fingered hand was curled around the nearest shelf in order to keep the man upright and that staff uncomfortably in Newt’s ribs. Now that he was taking a better, less freaked-out look, the other man was  _distinctly_  listing to the side into the support of the shelf.

“ _Totally_  predictable, if you hang around long enough to figure out the pattern. Look, this is a funny story, I’m completely harmless, so you can drop that before you fall over, alright?”

He’d definitely blame the adrenaline surge of being caught for the way Sorcerer Guy glaring down his nose and over the little round lenses perched there sent a pulse of interest down his spine instead of a shiver of fear, and he found it extremely hard to maintain said fear after noticing the cord looped down from the guy’s pince-nez and around his neck. No one could take tethered glasses seriously.

The sorcerer looked less than impressed, his expression echoed shamelessly by the stupid traitor cat. Though Newt supposed it couldn’t really be a traitor given that he was the interloper here and presumably the sorcerer fed it. Anyway. It probably also wasn’t a great sign that the other man pushed himself further upright, fingers pressed white where they still held that staff up.

“Who _are you._ And _what_  are you doing here?” He had perfect, if rushed, high-class diction even while trying to dress down a home invader. Not fair, in Newt’s opinion.

“Yeah, you said that already. Name’s Newt, Newt Geiszler, you may have heard of me?” He lifted a hopeful eyebrow, tilting his head in a way he’d been informed was endearing and trying to tame the inevitable squeak and scratch of a voice that never quite settled. “No? Oh well. Kinda got myself caught in a game of ‘screw with the outsider’, you know how it is. No harm done, so if you’d like to stop pointing your magic stick at me I will be leaving and out of your hair, no problem.” The pressure on his ribs decreased slightly, and Newt encouraged it with a tilted smile even if his mouth ruined it by going on without his brain’s permission. “… Un _less_ …. You wanna help me spite some yokels by lending me something neater than cinnamon as a token?”

“‘Newt’ is not a name. ‘Newt’ is an animal.” The sorcerer’s voice still dripped with suspicion, the end of his staff hitting the flagstones with a thunk as he let it drop and straightened, shifting his weight onto it and unfortunately still firmly blocking Newt’s escape path. The cat seemed to give up on attention from either of the humans, and took itself off in search of other entertainment. “And I am _certainly_  not aiding you in stealing any of my experiments or my pest control.”

“Well, it’s my name anyway. ‘Newton’ if you’re gonna get all formal on me.” He couldn’t help a reflexive eye roll, the sorcerer certainly not the first person to hit him with that gem. “I’m not like, a professional thief, so emphasis on the ‘lend’. I’m sure you’ve got something useless and glowy I could have for five seconds for the sake of my reputation. And your cat is totally safe from me.”

“You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I care about your reputation or intend to let you go anywhere with any property of mine.” Newt felt himself abruptly jerked forward, those long blunt fingers curled into the front of his shirt and dragging him skip-stuttering over his own feet towards the door. Fast moves for someone who’d looked about to fall over just moments before. “And you will be telling me _exactly_  how my Jaegers are _predictable_ , mister ‘Newton Geiszler.’”

“Hey! Man, stop saying that like it’s not actually my name! I _like_  my name!” Newt bristled, finding his rhythm in the wake of the taller man’s syncopated one, each step-touch-pull of the staff flowing through the man’s lean body and back through an extended arm to tug at his hold on Newt. “And here’s the part where _you_  tell _me_  what to call you-” His attempt to indicate non-threatening friendliness with a few expansive open handed-gestures sent his gait off again, his bag bouncing off his hip as he gained nothing more than a mildly pained grunt from the sorcerer in front of him. “Or you could just drag me around, that’s great too. Thanks.” He sighed, resigning himself to being manouvered to his presumed doom in intense silence.

\--</3--

 

His doom was apparently destined to come in an absolute dream of a lab: Newt went slack against the pull of of the other's hand, taking in the large horseshoe shaped workroom wide-eyed and forgetting entirely any resentment at having his shins barked on the way up the stairs. Counters lined the innermost curve of the wall, set under cabinets he desperately wanted to rummage through and looming over piles of books. The center work-top was an organized chaos of papers, flanked on the other counters by what seemed to be scaled maquettes and scattered parts of the metal simulacra 'Jaegers' and an open archway with a library of even more books lurking beyond. One wall consisted entirely of the most massive piece of dark, smooth slate he'd ever seen, covered in neat rows of symbols and numbers. Newt was released in front of that center desk, the sorcerer perching himself regally on a high stool and regarding him as if he expected the adventurer to stay put through nothing more than the power of  his presence.

Though it _was_  a lot of presence for someone who had their glasses on a string like a little kid’s mittens, he had to admit.

“Now, talk. How did you get in?” Presence that started to get on Newt’s nerves, actually, all that high-and-mighty air feeding the throb of the headache lingering from the previous night.

“You have terrible manners, man. What’s with the dragging? Is there something wrong with a polite ‘Hey, come upstairs with me and we can discuss how to improve my badass metal knights in my super cool workroom, maybe we can have some tea’? I would’ve come right along.” Newt crossed his arms and shot back his best disgruntled frown, not inclined to show off even if it did bring him back around to death-by-petty-spice-larceny.

“I hardly think a trespasser deserves manners. Quit stalling.” Newt wondered if Mystery-Sorcerer ever let up with the narrow-eyed glare thing, though as the air was punctuated with tiny geometric lightning flares discretion was perhaps the better part of valor at this point.

“Yeesh. _Fine_. I snuck in, that’s all. Your Jaegers do their little march and switch off deal, and it looks like it’s random at first but if you wait long enough it’s clear they’re on a loop with varied timing, right? I hope it’s not like just a music box tape, that’d be way disappointing. Oh, and I saw one walk _through_ a big ass rock, so once I figured out every once in a while they weren't even real  it was even easier to find the gap and get by without setting ‘em off. I think I actually did trip one but when I got closer to the tower it just kinda stopped and went back to its spot.” He shrugged and glanced around the workspace, squinting at the giant slate and trying to pick words out of the spiky scrawl of chalk. The sorcerer looked like he’d been given a lemon to suck, maybe at birth. “No big. Bet the sneaky fake ones save on wear and tear, yeah? Make the most of your resources.‘s smart.”

“I see.” Dark eyes sharpened, picking over Newt and mulling over the explanation, the man’s long fingers tapping in irritable sequence at his leg. "Think you're clever, don't you."

Newt shrugged again, a slight proud smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Been around."  He twisted away from the other man's gaze, taking in more of the workroom as he worked his coat off. "'S warm in here."

"Hmn. Have your letters?"

"And the numbers too. Praise the gods, it's a miracle." He draped the jacket over his arm, wiggling his fingers in an open-palmed celebratory wave before he set to rolling up his sleeve and exposing colored skin to the air to cool off. "Is there a point to this? Got any secret creepy mountain hermit offspring that suddenly need a nanny?"

“'Creepy mountain hermit' - No, I do not!” Newt had the pleasure of watching the stuffy jerk draw himself up, affronted. “Have you no respect?”

"Well, if you're not gonna give me a name to call you I'm gonna make stuff up, man." He grinned, pleased with the reaction.The jacket was flipped smoothly into the crook of his elbow to repeat the process on the other side, Newt watching his interrogator with lifted brows. ”Just lemme know if I'm getting thrown out the window any time soon so I can make peace with my lot, alright?"

“I am _not_  going to throw you out a window…” He sniffed, spine pulled straighter and the motion of his fingers stilling to curl instead into the plush fabric of his robes. “But I am also not inclined to encourage the, as you say, ’yokels' to make their own attempts on my property should I let you free, so I might as well make use of you. Waste not want not, I believe is the phrase."

"So…” He dragged the syllable out. “I'm not dying today, is what I'm hearing.”

“That would be wasteful, both of my time and energy and your half a brain. Which is half a brain more than I've encountered in most people so far."

"Thanks, I think."  It was actually physically painful to hold back another eye-roll, Newt’s voice gone flat. Neither sarcasm nor stubborn will seemed to be limited resources for either of them.

"You will stay here, assist me, and perhaps after a suitable amount of time you can come up with some ridiculous story of how you fought your way free. For your...'reputation'."

"I _will_ , will I?" Newt wanted to smack away the dismissive flick of the sorcerer’s fingers, folding his arms firmly across his torso and tucking his hands safely away from the temptation, the jacket hanging haphazard out the side.

"I _could_  just dispose of you." Yep. That cool detachment thing was _definitely_  getting on Newt’s nerves. _Make up your mind whether you’re convincing me or threatening me, man._

" you could _ask_ , dude."

The sorcerer blinked, clearly not having considered this an option. "You’ll ... stay, then?"

"Sure. Don't have anything better going.” Newt let the tension drop from his shoulders, dropping his hands into his pockets to suppress a different type of temptation and taking in another lingering, telegraphed pass of their surroundings. _So. Much. Awesome stuff._  “Seriously though, what can I call you?"

"My name is Hermann." The words came out curt, and he paused for a faraway moment, thin lips twisting. "'Sir' will do from you."

Newt snorted, sketching a loose and mocking salute that ended in another wiggle of his fingers. "Right. _Sir_. Yessir. Will totes do that, Siiiiiiir."

 

\--</3--

 

In a minor miracle the evening saw Newt settled-slash-dismissed rather than poofed or defenestrated for insolence and given an injunction to ‘stay put and not bloody touch anything’. He scuffed his boots through the dust of his new closet-claiming-to-be-a-bedroom and flopped onto the disused cot to ponder his life and his choices. His ribs did not thank him for the effort, bruised already from excessive prodding and not the most precision tool for discovering that he’d tried to roll onto his occupied bag. He levered himself up, tucking himself into a cross-legged seat on top of the covers and rescuing his one success of the day from the depths of the satchel. The wooden box fit more-or-less well in the cradle of his hands, just big enough to hold something about the size of his fist and topped with a delicate geometric tile inlay in an eastern style, bright repeating colors against dark smooth wood.

“Well, let’s see what I risked life and limb and got myself stuck here for, huh? I will scream if you turn out to be Cilantro, my friend. Useless soap herb.” He frowned as his fingers slid off the top of the box, another dry spark prickling his fingers at odds with the smooth varnish. “...That was weird.”

Newt settled the box more solidly in his palm, gripping the lid as if he was wrenching open a jar of stubborn preserves, and still it refused to shift even slightly. He tried again, eliciting a  flash of pale, pale green around the seal where the two parts met and his fingers pricking with static once more. Rather than put the tricky thing down he lifted it to inspect the underside for a hidden catch, brows drawn together and his tongue sliding between his teeth in concentration.

“ You’re clearly something _fun_. What on the Gods’ green earth were you doing with the spices, huh?”

Only after a variety of approaches proved unfruitful did he grudgingly give up for the night, stress headache drowning out the buzzing of his excitable mind at last. He sat The Box carefully down on the wall shelf that seemed to pass for a nightstand and curled under the thin blankets on his side to keep it in sight and let his brain work on it over night; he had a whole new world of challenges like it to explore in the morning, if Hermann-the-repressed would let him.

Still, it was nice to have a puzzle all his own to look forward to.

Newt was dimly aware of a weight padding across his legs as he drifted off, the fluffy white mass of the stupid maybe-not-so-traitorous-cat settling behind his knees to welcome him home and steal his warmth.

\--</3--

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks go to my friend Hat, without whom I would not have 2.3k of newt taking over my fic and being a little sh-t, excuse my french. Illustrations such as they are are my own, hdu Charlie Day.
> 
> Comments and kudos are thoroughly appreciated, as is constructive criticism and/or formatting advice. I can be found posting random things that occasionally include PacRim and whining about artistic endeavors on tumblr as [ Hockpock](http://hockpock.tumblr.com)

**Author's Note:**

> Wanted to get this posted so i'd have motivation, and future chapters will be longer. Please ignore pretentious pseudo scientific titles, they made sense when I came up with them. Thank you for reading!
> 
> edit: updated with illustration. next chapter coming soon.


End file.
